We Must reach Out to "See People"

By Jim McFarland, SVdP Staff

Recently in the Rant & Rave section of the Seattle Times, a person publicly thanked us saying, “to the staff and patrons of the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store, who I know are not exactly well-heeled, for finding and returning my wallet intact and restoring my faith in human nature.”

A Priest in a Parish in Western Washington several days ago wrote us a note saying, “peace be with you. I was one of the many seminarians hired to work for St. Vincent de Paul. Thank you for your works of love.”

An anonymous person we had helped several months ago sent a handwritten note simply addressed to St. Vincent de Paul saying “thank you and the volunteers that assisted me. I am grateful and blessed because of your help.” A senior manager of an agency that helps low income people in Seattle says we get very high praise from many people who need help because “St. Vincent de Paul treats people with dignity.” That really shouldn’t be so hard to do, or should it?

We are not bragging or trying to pass along compliments to ourselves. That isn’t the point of the aforementioned stories. We manage over 200 calls a day from people needing all kinds of social service help. There is a clear indication to us that the profound needs of the less fortunate are increasing. Our mission and our work have trained us to listen, to try to understand, to communicate, and build bridges in difficult and stressful times. We understand the need for civil, honest, and dignified discourse. It is all part of how we go about doing our business.

We are passing along these stories at this time because we have been through some riveting experiences with gun violence here in Seattle over the past year. We recently had a half-dozen people gunned down in a small and quaint coffee shop no more than a mile from my home. We are on a pace to have more homicides in our city than ever before in our history. Several days ago two young boys stabbed another teenager 34 times because of an argument connected with selling drugs.

This is all frightening, confounding, and confusing. But we have to keep believing in humanity and doing what is right. We can’t and shouldn’t give up on people. In fact, we should be doing just the opposite. We should be talking about helping one another. We should be encouraging dialog and understanding. We should be listening more carefully than we ever have.

Our mission at St. Vincent de Paul is to bring together groups of people to help the less fortunate and enrich our lives through acts of giving and kindness. Unfortunately, many acts of human kindness and thoughtful giving are never acknowledged. And oftentimes it takes grisly events like killing a group of people at a coffee shop to get us all to stop, reflect and think about what kind of world we have created and what kind of world we want for ourselves and our families and friends.

We need to ask some hard questions. What kind of people have we become? What can and should we do about the random acts of violence and brutal killings? Are people losing their capability to have compassion? The answers are complicated. We need a healing time, prayer groups, small discussion meetings and sessions in neighborhood settings. We need talk sessions at work, and family meetings about how we are all in this world together.

I believe we are being pulled apart because we no longer see and understand faces. Some of us say technology is pulling us apart. That isn’t totally correct. Technology speeds up and simplifies communications and enables us to connect and solve problems we never thought we could.

However, the pace of change and the speed with which things happen now make it easier for us to forget a face and lose a connection. Many of us, our neighbors, family and friends are lonely and lost. We are being pulled apart. Some of our connections are impersonal and disconnected. And this is happening at a time when we are in desperate need of slowing down and helping one another through cultural and economic confusion we haven’t experienced since the depression.

One of our volunteers in Seattle recently told me “People are not seen anymore. They feel lost, they feel disconnected. We need to remember they are people, they are someone else’s child, they have feelings, and they have hopes and aspirations.”

The volunteer is so right. We need to see people, we need to respect their rights, and we need to understand feelings, and actually see and feel people for who and what they are. We need to communicate with honesty and civility.

That is what we need to do. All of us.